I'm looking for a good book by/about Joseph Stalin, but not just a boring history textbook telling me when he was born, what date he did this, etc.
Is there anything that can give me new, interesting information I might not otherwise discover?
Stephen Kotkin is currently writing the multi-volume definitive biography of Stalin if you're interested
>>7501629
Koba The Dread by Martin Amis is exactly what you're looking for. You're welcome. Enjoy.
Best biography on him I've read so far. Yes, it goes through his life but is extremely well written.
>>7501629
If you're looking for books by him, he basically wrote three of any major importance, Foundations of Leninism,
Dialectical and Historical Materialism, and
The History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.
If however you'd rather read something that would give you a look inside his brain, know that his favourite book growing up was a Georgian novel called "The Patricide", and he even took one of the characters names as his pseudonym for many years. "Koba"
The court of the red tsar
>>7503175
>"bjography of a dictator"
Dropped
>>7501629
Young Stalin book about his early days Robbin banks n stuff
>>7501629
There's a Russian book, and it has a Polish translation and possibly an English translation, called, The Stalin Phenomenon (Fenomena Stalina), which is a collection of several authors such as Dzingis Aitmatov, Ernst Henry, Alexander Bowin, Aleksei Choriev, Michail Hefter, Fiodor Raskolnikov (no joke), Yuri Borisov and others. It's a book that was printed in 1986/87/88, somewhere around that time. I can't find any information about it online, perhaps you could check your university or friends.
DO NOT read anything published in the US/UK.
>>7505150
They are interviews with these people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fyodor_Raskolnikov
>>7505154
That's a little absurd, don't you think?
>>7505801
Not really, neither is very keen on producing material that presents Stalin or the USSR in any kind of positive light. They still teach their kids that Stalin caused the '32 famine and tried to kill all the Ukrainians, for reasons.
>>7505822
Stalin was a genocidal dictator. In 1939 Stalin's regime had killed more people than any other regime globally or historically. The record was only overtaken by Hitler when he started WWII, and then the Holocaust. Denial of this position has no basis in historical fact. There's a lot more nuance when it comes to future Soviet leaders, sure, Gorbachev especially, and even Lenin deserves some slack for a few things, but not Stalin. If you have a case for presenting him in a 'positive light', I'm all ears.
>>7506833
ah obvious propaganda
well memed :^)
>>7506842
vladimir pls go
Stalin was a journalist for a time, yes?
Is there a collection of his earlier writings, journalistic pieces, letters, etc.?
>>7501629
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dmitry_Galkovsky
Read this guy, though it's not Stalin bio.
